The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) or, The Nanny Terror!

4/09/2022

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) or, The Nanny Terror!

♥♥♥♥♥

A harmonious family picture is menacingly cut in half with Rebecca De Mornay's blond-haired, wicked face staring out on this effective poster for Curtis Hanson's The Hand That Rocks the Cradle

A harmonious young couple with a daughter and a second on the way have recently been through a case in which the mother/wife was one sexual misconduct accuser against a gynecologist who consequently took his own life. Now the couple hire a beautiful, blond nanny...

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is written by Amanda Silver (Eye for an Eye (1996)) and directed by Nevadan master filmmaker Curtis Hanson (Sweet Kill (1972)), whose 7th feature it is.

SPOILER The nanny turns out to be the late gynecologist's embittered, psychotic widow! The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is somewhat predictable but still a wildly effective, thrilling film with three great actress performances: Annabella Sciorra (The Maid's Room (2013)) as the unlucky wife/mother; Julianne Moore (Next (2007)) as her close friend and a real power woman; and Rebecca De Mornay (The Right Temptation (2000)) as the ice-cold nanny maniac.

Robert Elswit (Cadillac Dreams (1988, short)) gives solidity to the photography, - and the entire construction that is The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is in fact solid. It is a highly satisfying nail-biter erected around the transgressive idea of the callous, mad nanny.

Watch a short trailer for the film here

Cost: 11.9 mil. $

Box office: 140 mil. $

= Mega-hit (returned 11.76 times its cost)

[The Hand That Rocks the Cradle was released 10 January (USA) and runs 110 minutes. Shooting took place from April - July 1991 in Washington, including in Seattle. The film opened #1 to a 7.6 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it remained #1 for another 3 weekends and then spent another 3 weekends (#2-#4-#5) in the top 5, grossing 88 mil. $ (62.9 % of the total gross). Hanson returned with The River Wild (1994). Sciorra returned in Whispers in the Dark (1992); De Mornay in Blind Side (1993, TV movie) and theatrically in Guilty As Sin (1993). The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is fresh at 65 % with a 6.30/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

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Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Roger Corman has passed away

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

Louise Fletcher has passed away

Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

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Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

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Born in Vaucluse, France, Trintignant's theatrical debut as an actor was in If All the Guys in the World... (1955). Later credits include ...And God Created Woman (1956), The Seven Deadly Sins (1961), Inferno (1964), A Man and A Woman (1966), My Love, My Love (1967), A Man to Kill (1967), The Great Silence (1968), Z (1969), The Assassination (1972), Three Colors: Red (1994), Amour (2012), Happy End (2017) and many more. He also wrote and directed two films in the 1970s. Trintignant passed away at age 91. R.I.P.

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Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

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4/09/2022

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) or, The Nanny Terror!

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